Walking in the Dark
by hahalolsmileyface
Summary: "Aren't you scared?" he asked, knife poised at the ready. Because he was curious. She trembled but she didn't beg. She flinched but she didn't scream. Surely, she was scared. Who wouldn't be in this situation. He brought the knife down with force, except he stopped just shy of her heart when he heard her whisper, "I'm scared shitless."
1. Chapter 1

Bored.

He was bored. Always so _fucking _bored. There was never a moment in his life that offered any sort of entertainment.

There were distractions to be sure but even these distractions were starting to become costly and each and every time they, without fail, proved to be a disappointment.

The disappointment was almost worse than the boredom.

He liked women who fought. It made a bigger mess, a bloodier scene, and the screams were all the more lovely when it was steeped with pain.

His kills distracted him but it was just shy of enough. It was hardly ever enough.


	2. Chapter 2

He wrenched the knife out of her heart and lazily wiped the blood against the shoulder of her t-shirt. He surveyed the scene and let out a sigh. She'd been too easy, too _predictable._

Then again, they were all predictable.

Her name was...

It was...

Hannah. Was it?

She'd been shy when he asked her out for coffee. She'd blushed quite prettily when he'd invited her back to his place. She'd bled _beautifully _with each line that he carved into her skin.

He considered her for a moment. How many people would miss her now that she was no longer alive? How many people would care? Had he irrevocably destroyed their lives by taking hers?

He dialed a number as he pondered who might show up to her funeral and how many. She didn't seem all that beloved by the community after all. A nice girl, yes. Extraordinary? Hardly.

"Mmm'ello?"

"Malfoy," he said and he could almost hear the voice on the other end lose all traces of sleep that was previously present in his greeting. "Tired?"

"No," came the immediate response. "Need something?"

"Just a clean-up in the cellar. You know the one."

"You mean... there's another one? At the house?"

He hung up. For a moment he stood there, not able to put a finger on why his frustration was worse now than it was before. His fingers curled into a tight ball and with a sharp exhale, he forced himself to relax. He turned his back on the girl, stripping his shirt and heading up the stairs to the bathroom on the first floor.

He was bored again.


	3. Chapter 3

Hermione Granger frowned at the email she'd just received. There were many emotions that warred within her but the primary one was dread. She had to work that day. Even without the pressing need for money and all the bills that constantly loomed over her shoulder, she doubted that her boss would be so understanding as to let her take that day off, even if it was for a funeral.

There was a part of her that knew it was a terrible thought. She felt guilty enough that she considered the death of a friend inconvenient but that was what it was.

Inconvenient.

She'd known Hannah and sure, they'd been friends but they could hardly be considered the best of. They'd had a few classes together and she seemed a nice enough girl. They giggled about boys during study sessions; they even went on a double date once but even still, she hardly knew the girl. Would it really be so bad if she didn't go to the funeral?

Her head fell to the table with a resounding _thunk_ and she groaned. She knew that yes, it _would_ be bad if she didn't go to the funeral and for all intents and purposes, Hannah had been a friend. The very least she could do is go to the funeral and pay her respects.

She straightened at that and nodded her head resolutely. It was a crappy job anyway. If her boss is gonna be an asshole about her attending this funeral then he can go suck a dick because that was the least that Hannah deserved.

Especially after the way she died.


	4. Chapter4

Her boss _was_ an asshole about it but she didn't lose her job. Hermione wasn't sure if she should feel fortunate or unfortunate about that. She decided on the former. It was difficult as is, making ends meet and keeping her top notch grades. The stress of finding another job with midterms just around the corner was _not_ what she needed on her plate.

"Hi, ready to order?" she asked with a smile.

The man who'd come up to the register looked thoughtfully at the menu before turning his attention to her. "Coffee. Black. No cream, no sugar."

She nodded her head, writing it on a pad to her right. "What size?"

"12 oz."

She nodded again and peeked up at him under her lashes. He was very beautiful. His hair was swept neatly to the side, his eyes dark and broody. She hadn't even realized she was staring until he looked at her and gave her a brilliant smile. "I'm sorry, how much did you say it was?"

She didn't. Because she'd been staring at him. She could feel a blush creep up her neck as she laughed awkwardly. "1.75." He gave her a five and told her to keep it.

He stood by the counter while she made his coffee and when she went to hand it to him, he said, "Did you hear about that girl? The one at University?"

Hermione frowned. "Yeah. Hannah... I can't believe that happened to her."

He nodded sympathetically. "Yes, I can hardly believe it. We were RA's, working for the same professor. She was even on the student council."

At that, she looked at him more closely. "Oh, I'm so sorry. I didn't recognize you. You're Tom, right?"

He chuckled. "I'm not surprised. I may be the student body president but the campus is fairly big."

Hermione snorted. "What an understatement." The bell signaled another customer and she gave him a smile. "Well, goodbye Tom. It was nice seeing you."

He gave her a small wave and turned. She felt like an idiot for not recognizing him on sight, though to be fair, they were more strangers than anything. They didn't even have the same classes together. If she remembered correctly, he was three years her senior.

Their conversation had steered her thoughts to Hannah's funeral, to be held a week from now. She wondered if he'd come to her funeral.


	5. Chapter 5

She'd heard that she'd been stabbed in the heart. She'd heard that all sorts of wounds and bruises had graced her body but as she gazed into the open casket, she could see no trace of the horrors Hannah had endured. Perhaps, that was for the best. It was better to remember her this way. Bright, bubbly, peaceful.

Hermione set a rose down atop her chest, among the many that were already there. She looked peaceful. She hoped death had found her quick.

She shuffled back to her seat and contemplated the sort of demon that would do that. And for what purpose? Fun? Anger? Childhood trauma? She felt queasy for a moment but swallowed the bile that had built up in the back of her throat.

She wondered if the murderer at least felt guilty. Was there even a semblance of a conscience? Just a sliver? How could one take a life without any sense of remorse? She suddenly pictured what Hannah might've looked like – bound and lifeless with a knife sticking out of her chest.

At that thought, she couldn't keep the nausea back and she put a hand to her mouth. Not wanting to interrupt the ceremony – and thanking all that is holy that she'd had the sense to at least sit further to the back – she hurriedly left the service and ran to the nearest bathroom.

She'd just barely made it to the toilet when she vomited her breakfast.

... she _really_ hoped death had found Hannah quick.

She heard the door swing open as she threw up whatever remained in her stomach. She didn't think too much of it until a voice asked, "Are you okay?"

Hermione almost answered that yes, she was and that sorry, she'll be out soon and that thank you, there was no need to worry because her nausea was already fading away except-

"This is the girl's bathroom," she stated.

There was a pause.

She frowned. "What's a boy doing in the girl's bathroom?" She stared accusingly at the locked door as if the offending individual might realize that she was piercing him with the purest look of judgmental haughtiness that she could muster.

Then the voice responded, "This... isn't the girl's bathroom."


	6. Chapter 6

A/N: In response to reviewer Ydream808: I hope you know how much I fucking love you. You rock. You're the best. You're every writer's favorite kind of reviewer.

* * *

The first thing he heard when he entered the bathroom was a violent sort of retching. He nearly walked right back out. Of course, he didn't; decorum dictated, after all, that one must be concerned for the well-being of others and if there was one thing Tom had, it was manners.

He walked up to the stall and asked, "Are you okay?"

He resisted the urge to tap his feet because it would be inappropriate in this context; one could not express impatience when one was trying to express genuine concern. But he came to the bathroom for a _reason_ and if this boy didn't answer fast enough, civic duty be damned, he would make sure that his piss was well-aimed at-

"This is the girl's bathroom."

Tom cocked his head, brows furrowing at the distinctly _feminine_ voice. A feminine voice that clearly didn't belong to a boy.

"What's a boy doing in the girl's bathroom?"

He nearly laughed. What a silly question. "This... isn't the girl's bathroom."

Suddenly, the door swung open violently. So violently, in fact, that the resounding thud of the door hitting the stall startled him into taking a step back. She stood there, eyes wide, cheeks flushed, hands gesticulating wildly as she apologized profusely and tried to explain that she'd assumed that the door on the right was the girl's as that was the general set-up on campus and that she would _never_ have entered the boy's bathroom so thoughtlessly but she hadn't been feeling well so she burst in without really noticing her surroundings and _oh_ she was terribly embarrassed that someone, particularly someone like Tom, had found her in such a state in the _wrong_ bathroom.

He recognized her.

This was the girl from the coffee shop.

"Hermione," he said firmly, kindly. "It's okay. I simply wanted to know if you were alright."

She flushed pink and he wondered if that had been the wrong thing to say. It shouldn't have been. After all, he'd been studying human interactions for years and in a state of distress, social custom required an explicit show of concern or comfort. Most often concern followed by comfort though he'd seen cases where concern was assumed and comfort was singularly given.

"Yes," she said as she brought her hands up to her cheeks. "Yes, well..." She looked away, frowning as a thought occurred to her. "No, actually. I suppose not."

He moved aside as she stepped around him to wash her hands. "Is it Hannah?"

She nodded and he noticed her lower lip tremble. If he recalled, Hermione hadn't been close friends with Hannah when she'd been alive. He hadn't seen them together very often and what little interactions that he'd seen between them had been polite and friendly. The way you'd treat a classmate. Yet, this girl's death elicited her tears. He frowned. Perhaps, she was a simpleton – a naive child who thought that monsters didn't exist and if they did, they couldn't possibly affect their lives.

His lip trembled too, but only to keep his grin in check. She didn't even realize that she was talking to a monster.

He schooled his features into a pained grimace. "I can't stop thinking about her. What I could've done differently. I was the last person to have seen her, you know and I can't help but wonder if I should've just waited with her. Until someone came to get her. Until she was _safe_." He shook his head. "We'd finished our work on campus quite late and I even offered her a ride but she insisted that she'd be okay. She said someone had been on their way to get her."

Hermione turned to him. "You have to understand that you didn't know. You couldn't have possibly known. There was nothing you could do."

_Oh, how easy, _Tom thought as she stared at him with kind eyes. _How gullible. How weak._

_... How boring._


	7. Chapter 7

"You know," Tom hummed as he played with the blade of his knife. "The one emotion I was never able to emulate properly was fear."

There was a whimper and it resounded with an echo. He inhaled sharply and savored the taste of blood, sweat, and tears before glancing down at her. This one... had been quite a fighter. When she'd thrown a punch and _landed_ it on his jaw, he felt a stir of exhilaration. Perhaps, this was the cure to his boredom. The answer to the excitement he craved. Perhaps, the challenge he needed was the fight, not the risk.

"You do it so beautifully," he frowned, pressing his face closer to hers. "Do you think-"

"You sick fuck!" she spat. "My brothers will be looking for me and when they find you they will fucking rip you apart, you little piece of-"

"Now, now," he grimaced, straightening up to his full height. "There's no need to be so crass. Granted, your impending death and concurrent torture would make anyone feel less hospitable but please, let's be elegant about it."

She screamed.

He laughed.

"Come now, Ginny. Please make that face again. I have to learn after all. It's really the only way that someone like me could hope to imitate the emotions of someone like you. Once more," he clapped twice, sharply.

He could tell she didn't want to. She scowled and cursed as angrily as she could – it practically rivaled a sailor – but he could still see it. A stricken, _raw_ look of terror – a feeling he'd never felt. He sighed. Maybe he'd never been pushed with the right circumstances. Terror implied the fear of losing something.

Tom hardly had anything so precious to lose.


	8. Chapter 8

"12 oz. Black. No cream or sugar, right?"

Tom hummed, giving her another five. "I suppose it's not a very hard order to remember," he said with a smile.

She laughed. "You should see the long list of customizations that my other regulars spout off."

"They tip?"

"Hardly."

He grimaced. "That's terrible."

It was indeed, but tips were a courtesy, not a requirement so Hermione could hardly complain.

There was a pleasant pause as she poured the coffee. "Tom?"

"Yes?"

She felt flustered as she tried to remember the speech she'd rehearsed earlier that day. "I just wanted to say thank you," she finally mumbled out, handing the cup to him. She busied herself with wiping the counter as she continued, "For that day. At Hannah's funeral."

He gave a gracious smile. "You hardly need to thank me. You were clearly distressed. It was no problem, really."

It had been two weeks since then and Hermione noted that he came in every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night since then for his 12 oz. black, no-cream-or-sugar coffee. "Do you work the graveyard shift somewhere? I've noticed you come in quite late on the weekends for coffee and you never request decaf."

Tom chuckled amusedly and there was something about it – something in his eyes – as if there was a secret that only he knew, a joke whose punchline that only he was privy to. "Not a job, rather, a hobby."

Hermione perked up at this. "A hobby? What kind of hobby?"

He hummed. "A time-consuming one. I suppose you could call it a project. I take an individual sample from a pool of potentials and try to determine causation between two variables from which I inference a correlation based off of numerous personal observations."

She cocked her head at this. "So, you conduct experiments."

Tom grinned pleasantly. "I never thought of it like that."

She laughed. "I'm surprised you didn't. You _are_ a researcher, aren't you?"

"A research assistant," he corrected.

"To-ma-to, to-mah-to," she waved him off. "You don't strike me as the type to be anybody's assistant. If anything..." she trailed off, not noticing the keen look he was giving her.

"Granger!" She never got to finish her sentence. Startled out of her thoughts, she turned back to see her boss, poking out of the backroom. There was a phone in his hand and a disgruntled expression on his face. "Phone call for you. It's from a Ron."

She frowned, not sure what it could be about. He knew she was at work and he'd never call here unless it was important. "Excuse me," she said absently and Tom nodded, turning to leave.

Hermione could feel her anxiety pool in her legs as she held her hand out for the phone. "Hello?"

There was a sob – a broken one that she'd never heard from him before. "'Mione, it's Ginny."

She felt a chill in her bones.

"She didn't come home last night or the night before. Please, _please_, tell me you've seen her."

The desperation in his voice nearly made her heart stop because no, she hadn't seen her. She hadn't seen her for two days.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N: I normally don't put A/N's but I just wanted to say that this could probably be considered a filler chapter. It's not vital in particular to the storyline (if there _is_ a storyline?) other than to introduce Draco and Abraxas Malfoy and even that could've been done more creatively but I've reached a block and I liked this scene that played out in my head and I've missed writing even if it was for short chapters.

You'll note – I made Abraxas and Draco cousins in this one. I know it diverges completely from canon lineages but I simply couldn't choose between the two. I promise I'm not _that_ ignorant. To paraphrase, it's not a mistake.

Much love,

HLS

* * *

"You look like shit."

She glared at Malfoy – the minutely less tolerable one – and sneered. Normally, she was above such things but she felt like her lack of self-care today was warranted.

His cousin, the second Malfoy seated next to him, nodded solemnly which made her scowl. "He's right. You _do_ look like shit."

She didn't feel like explaining to them; she couldn't bring herself to spit the words out.

"Fuck off, Malfoy."

"You're gonna have to be a _bit_ more specific, Potter. We're both Malfoy's," the first one reminded him.

"Then both Malfoy's should fuck off."

She watched Draco turn to his cousin. "They must've realized the she-weasel is probably _dead_."

Harry stood up so fast that his chair flew back with a clang and he was immediately leaping across the table to wring his neck while Hermione yelped and grasped his sweater, trying to pull him back. He slipped out of her grasp when the combined forces of gravity and inertia had them tumbling onto the floor.

Organic Chemistry had always been a difficult subject, made more difficult by the Professor that taught it. What had turned the class downright shitty to attend were the two Malfoy cousins seated across from them at their small table in the back.

"Brax!" Draco shouted.

"I'm gonna kill you," Harry chanted.

Abraxas, the second Malfoy, stepped back smoothly, avoiding flailing arms with an amused expression.

The fighting had paused immediately when a silent but overbearing presence made itself known. "So, Potter has decided that learning about Grignard reactions are beneath him, is that it?"

Both boys looked up from their places on the floor – Draco with a triumph and Harry with dread.

"It's not his fault, Professor Snape," Hermione started, stepping forward to protect her friend. "Draco-"

"I'm not interested in whatever poor excuse you have lined up to save your friend. If he's going to fight like a common thug then he's not welcome in here. You're excused from my classroom, Potter."

Hermione inhaled, outraged. "It _wasn't_ his fault!"

"I won't tolerate any sort of disruption during my lectures, Ms. Granger," Snape said with distaste.

"Well, you can shove it," Hermione snarled as she swung her open backpack over her shoulder and gathered her haphazardly-strewn notes. She knew she shouldn't say that to a teacher. She knew she never would have. She _knew_ it was out of character because everybody knew that Hermione Granger would never raise her voice at a teacher. Everybody stared at her. Harry's jaw had dropped.

She stormed toward the door and when she heard no footsteps behind her, she turned sharply and snapped, "Harry, are you coming?"

Harry shut his mouth with an audible click and swiped his notebook off the table.

No, normally she would have swallowed her rising temper and stewed internally, but with the emotional hell she'd been enduring for the past three days, she deserved a fucking break.

Harry, wisely, kept his mouth shut.


End file.
